By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker

You’ve heard of hump day, that day in the middle of the workweek that you just have to get past? Well, we’ve finally reached the hump day for our book. We’re editing Chapter 8 in a 15-chapter book. While author friends have told us that writing a book is a long, hard process, we never imagined how long or hard it really was actually going to be.

We were brimming with ideas and bursting to tell our story. We couldn’t wait to put down principles we believed could truly help entrepreneurs be more successful, whether they were thinking of starting a business, had already started one, or were in the growth phase.

After outlining the book, writing a proposal, and quickly crafting a first draft, we got down to the task of editing, rewriting, and editing again. Then we had a select group of people we trusted read and edit each chapter. When their edits arrived, we had to onboard them and send them back. What a process!

But finally, we’re editing and rewriting Chapter 8, The Passion Project. It’s the chapter on the business I started and had to close because it never earned a profit, Sigma Communications. Sigma published a high-end commercial real estate magazine. Looking back now on all that led to shutting down my business, which I had based on a long-held passion, was sobering. In developing the chapter we uncovered Seven Failure Points, which we explore in depth. We expect the failure points will be very instructive to anyone who is thinking of starting a business.

When I launched Sigma, I believed that my passion for the business would trump everything else. That proved to be a costly assumption. My Sigma venture is a case study in why organizing a business based on your distinctive competence will substantially outperform a venture based only on passion.

Following your passion can lead you to make decisions without enough forethought or knowledge. I lacked the experience – i.e., the distinctive competence – that I believe any new venture requires in its founder. I truly knew nothing about being a publisher. And my strong passion for becoming a publisher did not make up for that void. This was Failure Point #1.

Ed McLaughlin is currently co-writing the book “The Purpose Is Profit: Secrets of a Successful Entrepreneur from Startup to Exit” with Wyn Lydecker and Paul McLaughlin.

 

Copyright © 2014 by Ed McLaughlin   All rights reserved.